More than 80% of the rotating pieces of equipment in a typical refinery or power plant are centrifugal pumps. The number of centrifugal pumps can often be on the order of 1,000 pumps or more in such plants. Any failure in a pump can cause large-scale downtime of the plant, as well as high maintenance costs. Therefore, continuous monitoring of these pumps is useful so that the progress of any fault can be monitored. There are various components in a typical pump, such as its bearings, impeller, shaft, and gearbox.
One survey found that gearbox failures account for 340 of all failure modes (such as fatigue) in aircraft. Another survey revealed that gearbox failures account for 15% of all failures in a certain industry. Equipment failures typically result in lost revenues due to plant downtime. Accordingly, detecting potential failures (such as faults) in a gearbox or other equipment at an early stage can assist in preventing secondary damage, save maintenance costs, improve plant uptimes, reduce potential financial losses from plant downtime, and assist towards increasing productivity.